When the burglar comes through the house, that’s when you want to make sure you’ve got the Rottweiler. I think the mood of the country was to go at this guy (Hitler), so I don’t think calling Churchill a warmonger was a negative thing at that time in Britain.

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ACG: People today, Americans especially, tend to forget what a near-run thing it was for Britain standing alone against Nazi Germany in 1940. There are scenes in the film in which Churchill seems unshakably confident and others when he is gripped by what he called his "black dog of despair." Would you care to comment on those two sides of his personality?

BG: I think they were inextricably linked. One of his most admirable traits was that he refused to lay under the black dog. He’d paint, he’d build a wall, he wouldn’t give in to it. The self-belief was something he needed.

ACG: Churchill didn’t have a close relationship with his parents, something touched on in this film.

BG: He adored his parents. There was a feeling from a very early age that he wasn’t the center, like a dunce put in the corner but who knows the answer. He knew he wasn’t in line to inherit Blenheim Castle, a huge estate (Churchill’s birthplace – ACG). He’d been slightly in second place for much of his life, and that allowed him to see the center from outside, so when he got to the center he was able to say, this is why I am here.

You know Churchill was both British and American. (His mother was American—ACG) There are different views between the British and Americans toward failure. Americans don’t like failure. The British tend to admire people who do their best, even if they fail. His reaction was much more American. He did not settle for it. He didn’t want the heroic failure. The greatest gift he gave the British people was to tell them "we will not surrender." Even if driven from the island, they would set up a government elsewhere, perhaps in America or Canada, and even if it took a thousand years, they would reclaim England. He took surrender off the agenda, and that freed people up a bit. There was no feeling that if we talk to them maybe they won’t throw the stones at us as hard. By taking away the option of surrender, he took that out of consideration.

ACG: How would you sum up your experience playing Winston?

BG: Slalom without a ski lift. You’ve got to walk up the mountain, but it’s well worth the ride down.

ACG: Is there anything you hope viewers will take away about Churchill after watching Into the Storm?

BG: His humanity. I’m an actor, not a historian. I would hope we would sit in his shoes for a little bit and share the amazing kind of life he had at that time.

Read an interview with Hugh Whitemore, who wrote the script for Into the Storm. Click here to read an article about Churchill’s unconventional mother.

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